Zharia O’Neal (she/her/hers) is a poet, playwright, and multi-medium storyteller hailing from the British Virgin Islands. Her work, self-baptized B/black comedy, tends to explore chosen / unchosen families, and the queerness of liminal space and memory. O’Neal is the William S. Yellow Robe Jr. Playwright-in-Residence at Sound Theatre, 2023 Artist-in-Residence at Headlands Arts Center, an International Artists’ Fellow and 2022 graduate of the MFA program in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California. She has worked in association with the Ojai Playwrights’ Conference, RealTime Productions, Playwrights’ Arena, and City Hearts. Her works include: roost (Semifinalist, 2023 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), the blood of a hibiscus, Seven Stage Circle, and poetry collection rottincrop.

Adam Esquenazi Douglas is a Cuban-American playwright and video game writer. His theater work has been featured in the Texas State University Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Downtown Urban Theater Festival, and many others. In 2017, his play “The One ATM in Antarctica” was selected for the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference. His video game writing work has been nominated for a GLAAD Award.  He currently lives in Los Angeles where he is a writer for Night School Studio and Netflix. Game writing credits: The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, Minecraft Story Mode Season 2, The Walking Dead: The Final Season – Telltale Games. Oxenfree, Afterparty, Next Stop Nowhere – Night School Studio. Upcoming: Oxenfree II: Lost Signals – Night School Studio and Netflix.

Shem Bitterman: Playwright, screenwriter, director. Plays include: Iowa Boys (CBS/FDG Award), Beijing Legends (National Play Award), Ten Below (National Play Award), The Circle, The Job (Best New Play, LA Critic’s Circle), The Ramp (California Playwrights Competition), Night-Side, Peephole (Davie Award), A Death In Colombia, Influence, Open House, man.gov., Harm’s Way (PEN USA Award), and The Stone Witch. Films include: Whitney (Image Award Nominee),  Betty & Coretta (Humanitas Prize Nominee), Time For Me To Come Home For Christmas, Play Dead, Full Count. Off The Lip, Open House, Tinsletown, and Halloween 5. As Writer/Director: Peehole, The Job and Open House and Distant Tales, due out in September, 2023.

Kurt Eggert is a Professor of Law at Chapman University Fowler School of Law. He has testified to Congress on a variety of issues, including Internet poker and Daily Fantasy Sports, as well as consumer protection in subprime lending. In an earlier life, he worked for a small movie production company, where he helped produce movies and created trailers for movies and wrote screenplays.

Jonathan Gratch is a Research Full Professor of Computer Science, Psychology and Media Arts and Practice at the University of Southern California (USC) and Director for Virtual Human Research at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1995.  Dr. Gratch’s research focuses on computational models of human cognitive and social processes, especially emotion, and explores these models’ potential to advance psychological theory and shape human-machine interaction. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief (retired) of IEEE’s Transactions on Affective Computing, founding Associate Editor of Affective Science, Associate Editor of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, and former President of the Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (AAAC). He is a Fellow of AAAI, AAAC, and the Cognitive Science Society.

John Lopez: An L.A. native, John got his start as an assistant to feature film producers before moving on to cover entertainment and the arts for Grantland, Vanity Fair online, and Business Week among others. An alum of the Sundance Episodic Television Lab and NBC Short Cuts Film Festival, John has written for such shows as Paramount Plus’s Strange Angel, Seven Seconds for Netflix, and The Terminal List on Amazon. In the run up to the Writers Guild of America’s 2023 MBA negotiations, John was a member of the WGA’s AI Working Group

Jen Markewych is a philosopher who began her academic career at California State University Los Angeles but will be moving to the University of California Davis in the fall. She is a former firefighter/paramedic from the Chicagoland area who specialized in crisis response, providing psychological first aid for emergency responders after traumatic incidents. After a move to Los Angeles, she joined the Mayor’s Crisis Response Team. She returned to school to advance her studies, but after the fateful coinciding of a series of sudden deaths in her immediate family and the taking of one philosophy class, she turned her focus to the discipline. She now speaks to international audiences on the underlying philosophy of crisis response and runs a private coaching and consulting company that serves individuals and organizations in that capacity. Her areas of specialization in philosophy are applied ethics and public philosophy and she believes that philosophy is the only discipline that can save the world. She is also a member of the Screen Actors Guild. She can be reached at jen@thedesideratacompany.com.

Sigrid Gilmer makes black comedies that are historically bent, totally perverse, joyfully irreverent
and deal with issues of identity, pop culture and contemporary American society. Sigrid’s Harry and
the Thief – an action film/historical/time travel play about a thief who is blackmailed into traveling
back in time to deliver a cache of arms to Harriet Tubman – has been produced across the country,
including Pavement Group (Chicago), the Know Theatre (Cincinnati), and the Skylight Theatre (LA).
Additional plays include: Slavey (Clubbed Thumb), Seed: A Weird Act of Faith, It’s All Bueno
(Cornerstone Theater Company), Mama Metal (IAMA Theatre Co.). Sigrid is a USA Artist Fellow.
Her TV work includes: A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix), Claws (TNT) and Gossip Girl (HBO
Max). Sigrid has an MFA in Writing for Performance from Cal Arts and lives in Los Angeles.

Weston Gaylord is a playwright and librettist based in Los Angeles. He has been a member of the Geffen Writers’ Room and The Vagrancy Playwrights Group, and a recipient of the Humanitas PLAY LA Fellowship. His work in theater and immersive media often combines live performance, music, and/or interactive technology: Octopus’s Garden (Seven Devils Playwrights Conference Finalist), Sherwood & Nottingham (Spy Brunch), Chained: A Victorian Nightmare (MWM Interactive), Gravity: A New(tonian) Musical (O’Neill NMTC Finalist, TheatreWorks New Works Festival). His writing has also been featured at the Cannes XR Showcase, Games For Change, The Latest Draft podcast, A Little New Music and the Future of Storytelling Festival. Westongaylord.com

Morgan Smalley is a playwright, drag king, actor, improvisor, and musician. Throughout college, she saw many of her ten-minute plays come alive in festivals in the Washington DC area. Her first full-length play, Good Dogs was selected for a full production in Lorton, VA in 2018. After graduating college, she made the cross-country trip to Los Angeles, where she soon won the HUMANITAS Prize for playwriting. In 2022, she started performing regularly with her drag group, Madamn Presents!, in addition to acting in the Hollywood Fringe Festival show, The Pig Farm. She is currently working on her premiere fantasy novel, The Hubbub of Eternal Meats.

Steven Leigh Morris is a playwright, journalist and novelist. His plays have been published by Samuel French in New York, and also in south east Europe (Macedonia), and presented in New York (off-Broadway), Los Angeles (Playwrights’ Arena and Pacific Resident Theatre), and developed at Center Theatre Group, Rogue Machine and The Actors’ Gang. His latest play, “White People,” was commissioned by Qendra Multimedia in Prishtina, Kosovo. His debut novel, “Fowl Play” won the Gold Prize of the Indie Book Awards. As a journalist, Morris has written for the New York Times, LA Times, American Theatre Magazine, The Stage (London), DRAMA Magazine (London), and was theater editor for over a decade at the LA Weekly. He has served as both jurist and chair of the Drama Prize jury of the Pulitzer Prizes. Morris founded and continues to edit LA’s digital theater discussion forum, Stage Raw.

Lindsay Allbaugh, Center Theatre Group Associate Artistic Director, has made Center Theatre Group her home for the past 19 years. Allbaugh is preparing to direct Our Dear Dead Drug Lord by Alexis Scheer (Bad Cinderella, Broadway; Pretty Little Liars, HBO) at the Kirk Douglas theatre this August/September and most recently directed the award-winning production of “Cry It Out” by Molly Smith Metzler (Best Production: Ovation Award, LADCC Award, Stage Raw Award) at the Echo Theatre Company as well as Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties by Jen Silverman at the Boston Court Theatre. Lindsay was Co-Artistic Director of the Elephant Theatre Company from 2004 – 2014, where she directed and produced countless productions including “100 Saints You Should Know” by Kate Fodor, “Revelation” by Samuel Brett Williams, and “Never Tell” by James Christy.   Selected CTG producing credits include — Mark Taper Forum: “Slave Play,” “Archduke,” “Bent,” “Waiting for Godot;” Kirk Douglas Theatre: Creative Producer behind Block Party, “Tambo & Bones” “Good Grief,” “Throw Me On the Burnpile and Light Me Up,” “Endgame,” “Women Laughing Alone With Salad,” “Chavez Ravine,” “different words for the same thing,” “The Nether.”

Guillermo Cienfuegos serves as Artistic Director at Rogue Machine Theatre, along with founding AD John Perrin Flynn. He directed the Rogue Machine productions of The Beautiful People, Disposable Necessities, Ready Steady Yeti Go, and Dutch Masters. He won the Ovation and LADCC Awards for Best Director for Henry V at Pacific Resident Theatre. Other PRT credits include Rhinoceros, The Homecoming, and Safe At Home: An Evening with Orson Bean. Elsewhere, he directed the LA Premiere of Between Riverside and Crazy at the Fountain Theatre and most recently, Much Ado About Nothing at A Noise Within. Currently Cienfuegos is directing the Southern California Premiere of Heroes of the Fourth Turning.

Martha Demson, artistic director of Open Fist Theatre Company in Los Angeles, believes passionately in the voice and role of theatre in our communities. Highlights of her award-winning career with the Open Fist Theatre include: As a producer: THE GARY PLAYS (Mednick), THE COSMONAUT’S LAST MESSAGE TO THE WOMAN HE ONCE LOVED IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION (Greig), HOW TO EXPLAIN THE HISTORY OF COMMUNISM TO MENTAL PATIENTS (Visniec), FOOTE NOTES (Foote), TRAVESTIES (Stoppard), THE DEVIL WITH BOOBS (Fo). As a director: PAPA (deGroot), CASANOVA (Congden), ABINGDON SQUARE(Fornes), ESCAPE FROM HAPPINESS (Walker), FLIGHT OF THE EARLS (Humble), DEAR JOHN MAYER (Shoshana Bean / Eydie Faye). As an actress: JAMES JOYCE’S THE DEAD (Nelson/Davey), FOOTE NOTES (Foote), GETTING FRANKIE MARRRIED… AND AFTERWARDS (Foote),THE ABDICATION(Wolfe), THE WOODEN BREEKS (Berger). Education:  Yale University and Sanford Meisner’s master class.

Kim Glann has been a Los Angeles area theatre artist and arts manager for more than 25 years.
Currently, she manages cross-sector initiatives and an artist residency program for the Los Angeles
County Department of Arts and Culture. Previously, she was both Acting General Manager and Director of Communications and Marketing for the Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood. She has more than 20 years of experience as a communications professional, developing brands and leading publicity, advertising, and promotional campaigns. She continues to remain active in the LA theatre scene.

Matthew Quinn (Combined Artform- Artistic Director / Theater Asylum- Executive Producer)  has been involved in theater production and venue management for over 25 years in San Francisco, Los Angeles. He has produced Off-Broadway and is also the west coast scout for the Soho Playhouse in New York. He has the distinction of producing and managing venues every year of the Hollywood Fringe Festival (HFF) since its inaugural year in 2010. He also produces the “Hollywood Encore Producers’ Awards” (The Best of the Fringe), following the HFF in July and co-produces the “Pick of the Fringe” during the festival. Matthew is extremely concerned about the state of theater in California and believes new alliances and new ways of funding must be explored to ensure its future.

Roland Ruiz is a long time company member of Ammunition Theatre Company (AMMO) and most recently played the role of JJ in Carla Ching’s play REVENGE PORN: THE STORY OF A BODY in Ammo’s production last year. This year, Roland will recur as the role of Seth on “9-1-1 LONE STAR” on FOX. Previous Guest Star appearances include: “All Rise” (CBS), “Pure Genius” (CBS), and “NCIS” (CBS). He also recurred the role of ‘Lazlo’ in Season 4 of “How to Get Away With Murder.” Roland is best recognized for his Supporting Role in the Oscar-Winning movie, “Boyhood” where he played the memorable role of Enrique opposite Patricia Arquette.